Leaving Wall Street

Born to great wealth, Roy Neuberger spent his youth and early adulthood in a frustrating search for meaning in life. Until he began to explore Judaism's spiritual life.

by Cal Mankowski

Roy R. Neuberger made a name for himself as a legendary investor in value stocks and a keen observer of the market. But for his son and namesake, Roy S. Neuberger, the path to personal fulfillment has led him far from the world of high finance.

Instead of Wall Street, the son has made the spiritual life as an Orthodox Jew his primary focus. The younger Neuberger, age 58, tells his unusual life story in "From Central Park to Sinai/How I Found My Jewish Soul," recently published by Jonathan David Publishers Inc. of Middle Village, N.Y.

Born to great wealth, Neuberger spent his youth and early adulthood in a frustrating search for meaning in life. When he finally realized the answer for him was to make a commitment to the Jewish religion, he was not simply returning to the faith he knew as a boy. He was raised by his parents in a totally assimilated world with no Jewish tradition, no attendance at services and no religious studies.

"They raised me with an ethical intelligence, a conscience. They taught us to be good-hearted and generous," Neuberger said in a recent interview. "I think it's those qualities which caused me to look beyond my former lifestyle for a better way of life."

His father, now 97 years old, still resides in New York City and although officially retired, goes to his office at Neuberger Berman Inc. every day to trade for his own account. Some of his musings on investing still appear on the firm's Web site.

The father's life also took some unusual twists. He gave up a promising career in retailing in New York to pursue life as an artist in Paris. But after four years, he realized art was not his greatest talent.

Returning to New York, he and some partners started a firm to manage money for wealthy individuals in 1939. In 1950 he introduced one of the first value-style mutual funds, offered to the public with no front-end sales load.

Known as a nimble investor with a higher degree of skepticism about investment fads, the father confounded Wall Street in 1987 when he took a short position for a pension fund client. As the market raced higher that summer it looked like a major blunder. But the crash in October paid off handsomely for the client and only enhanced the reputation of Roy R. Neuberger.

"We were never raised with the idea we had to go into a specific business or into Wall Street."

His son concedes that he simply had no talent with numbers. At the same time, he was never under any family pressure to step into his father's shoes. "We were never raised with the idea we had to go in and make money, that we had to go into a specific business or into Wall Street."

As he tours the country today, Neuberger says, he has found people of all faiths rediscovering their religious roots, or discovering them for the first time. "I think it has something to do with the tremendous material success of the last decade," he said. "People feel a certain unease. 'What is life all about?' they ask. People are looking for spiritual answers."

Neuberger believes his book has struck a chord with many readers. One reason, he suggests, is that he does not aggressively push his views. He prefers instead to tell his story and let the reader draw his own conclusions. "I don't want to preach to anybody," he says. "I'm not telling anybody how to live."

Neuberger's anxiety led him to experiment with any number of religions.

As told in the book, Neuberger's anxiety that his life was falling apart and without any purpose led him in 1966 to experiment with any number of religions. In 1974, while he was running a small weekly newspaper in upstate New York, he visited a local synagogue.

There, he was introduced to Esther Jungreis, a rebbetzin, or rabbi's wife, who was gaining a reputation for inspiring lectures that were able to reawaken a sense of Jewish tradition.

In his book, Neuberger describes the meeting that led him and his wife, Leah, to change their lifestyle, sell their newspaper, relocate closer to Jungreis' headquarters in Brooklyn and immerse themselves in Bible studies and living the life of Orthodox Jews.

Realizing that he would have to have a regular income to pursue his new religious interest, he held a variety of jobs. First there was an editing job at a daily newspaper but it folded after a few years. Later, he worked as administrator at a religious school and for a real estate company.

From 1991 to 1998, with help from his father, he ran a small hedge fund that invested in stocks and commodities. Although he calls the fund's results "moderately successful" he adds, "I found out business is not my strong point." Since 1998, he has devoted himself to writing the book and lecturing about his experience in finding his religious roots.

As a youth, Neuberger says, he spent about six years seeing a psychiatrist. Based on his own personal experience, he has concluded that only religion gives meaning to life.

"I got the feeling after going to a psychiatrist that I was studying myself. It seemed like an endless maze. When I studied God and the Jewish way of life, I felt I was getting out of myself. I'm not looking for myself anymore. Now I'm looking for God and that was a freedom compared to this endless maze that was the case when I was going to the psychiatrist."

I’m wondering what happened to the House of David. After the end of the Kingdom of Judah was there any memory what happened to King David’s descendants? Is there any family today which can trace its lineage to David – and whom the Messiah might descend from?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

Thank you for your good question. There is no question that King David’s descendants are alive today. God promised David through Nathan the Prophet that the monarchy would never depart from his family (II Samuel 7:16). The prophets likewise foretell the ultimate coming of the Messiah, descendant of David, the “branch which will extend from the trunk of Jesse,” who will restore the Davidic dynasty and Israel’s sovereignty (Isaiah 11:1, see also Jeremiah 33:15, Ezekiel 37:25).

King David’s initial dynasty came to an end with the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian Exile. In an earlier expulsion King Jehoiachin was exiled by Nebuchadnezzar, together with his family and several thousand of the Torah scholars and higher classes (II Kings 24:14-16). Eleven years later the Temple was destroyed. The final king of Judah, Jehoiachin’s uncle Zedekiah, was too exiled to Babylonia. He was blinded and his children were executed (II Kings 25:7).

However, Jehoiachin and his descendants did survive in exile. Babylonian cuneiform records actually attest to Jehoiachin and his family receiving food rations from the government. I Chronicles 3:17:24 likewise lists several generations of his descendants (either 9 or 15 generations, depending on the precise interpretation of the verses), which would have extended well into the Second Temple era. (One was the notable Zerubbabel, grandson of Jehoiachin, who was one of the leaders of the return to Zion and the construction the Second Temple.)

In Babylonia, the leader of the Jewish community was known as the Reish Galuta (Aramaic for “head of the exile,” called the Exilarch in English). This was a hereditary position recognized by the Babylonian government. Its bearer was generally quite wealthy and powerful, well-connected to the government and wielding much authority over Babylonian Jewry.

According to Jewish tradition, the Exilarch was a direct descendant of Jehoiachin. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 5a) understands Genesis 49:10 – Jacob’s blessing to Judah that “the staff would not be removed from Judah” – as a reference to the Exilarchs in Babylonia, “who would chastise Israel with the staff,” i.e., who exercised temporal authority over the Jewish community. It stands to reason that these descendants of Judah were descendants of David’s house, who would have naturally been the leaders of the Babylonian community, in fulfillment of God’s promise to David that authority would always rest in his descendants.

There is also a chronological work, Seder Olam Zutta (an anonymous text from the early Middle Ages), which lists 39 generations of Exilarchs beginning with Jehoiachin. One of the commentators to Chronicles, the Vilna Gaon, states that the first one was Elionai of I Chronicles 3:23.

The position of Exilarch lasted for many centuries. The Reish Galuta is mentioned quite often in the Talmud. As can be expected, some were quite learned themselves, some deferred to the rabbis for religious matters, while some, especially in the later years, fought them and their authority tooth and nail.

Exilarchs existed well into the Middle Ages, throughout the period of the early medieval scholars known as the Gaonim. The last ones known to history was Hezekiah, who was killed in 1040 by the Babylonian authorities, although he was believed to have had sons who escaped to Iberia. There are likewise later historical references to descendants of the Exilarchs, especially in northern Spain (Catelonia) and southern France (Provence).

Beyond that, there is no concrete evidence as to the whereabouts of King David’s descendants. Supposedly, the great French medieval sage Rashi (R. Shlomo Yitzchaki) traced his lineage to King David, although on a maternal line. (In addition, Rashi himself had only daughters.) The same is said of Rabbi Yehuda Loewe of Prague (the Maharal). Since Ashkenazi Jews are so interrelated, this is a tradition, however dubious today, shared by many Ashkenazi Jews.

In any event, we do not need be concerned today how the Messiah son of David will be identified. He will be a prophet, second only to Moses. God Himself will select him and appoint him to his task. And he himself, with his Divine inspiration, will resolve all other matters of Jewish lineage (Maimonides Hilchot Melachim 12:3).

Yahrtzeit of Kalonymus Z. Wissotzky, a famous Russian Jewish philanthropist who died in 1904. Wissotzky once owned the tea concession for the Czar's entire military operation. Since the Czar's soldiers numbered in the millions and tea drinking was a daily Russian custom, this concession made Wissotzky very rich. One day, Wissotzky was approached by the World Zionist Organization to begin a tea business in Israel. He laughed at this preposterous idea: the market was small, the Turkish bureaucracy was strict, and tea leaves from India were too costly to import. Jewish leaders persisted, and Wissotzky started a small tea company in Israel. After his death, the tea company passed to his heirs. Then in 1917, the communists swept to power in Russia, seizing all of the Wissotzky company's assets. The only business left in their possession was the small tea company in Israel. The family fled Russia, built the Israeli business, and today Wissotzky is a leading brand of tea in Israel, with exports to countries worldwide -- including Russia.

Building by youth may be destructive, while when elders dismantle, it is constructive (Nedarim 40a).

It seems paradoxical, but it is true. We make the most important decisions of our lives when we are young and inexperienced, and our maximum wisdom comes at an age when our lives are essentially behind us, and no decisions of great moment remain to be made.

While the solution to this mystery eludes us, the facts are evident, and we would be wise to adapt to them. When we are young and inexperienced, we can ask our elders for their opinion and then benefit from their wisdom. When their advice does not coincide with what we think is best, we would do ourselves a great service if we deferred to their counsel.

It may not be popular to champion this concept. Although we have emerged from the era of the `60s, when accepting the opinion of anyone over thirty was anathema, the attitude of dismissing older people as antiquated and obsolete has-beens who lack the omniscience of computerized intelligence still lingers on.

Those who refuse to learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. We would do well to swallow our youthful pride and benefit from the teachings of the school of experience.

Today I shall...

seek advice from my elders and give more serious consideration to deferring to their advice when it conflicts with my desires.

With stories and insights,
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